EU may mandate multiple browser bundling with new PCs

According to The Wall Street Journal, the EU is considering forcing Windows …

The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) is reporting today that European Union antitrust regulators aren't done with Microsoft yet. The EU is looking into more sanctions against the software giant for including Internet Explorer with Windows, according to WSJ's sources, and will likely announce a final ruling in the next few weeks. An EU spokesperson said that if the regulator rules against Microsoft, any remedy "would be based on the fundamental principle of unbiased choice" while a Microsoft spokesman says the company is "committed" to "full compliance" with EU law.

Third-party browser makers like Opera, Mozilla and Google are pushing for tough sanctions against Microsoft. That may result in the software giant having to include rival browsers in Windows. Redmond's main argument is that users can always download a third-party browser, but the EU would rather have a "ballot screen" for users to choose which browsers to download and install as well as which one to set as default. The bundling requirement might end up becoming a responsibility for manufacturers.

With the release of the Windows 7 Release Candidate, Microsoft made it possible to remove IE8 (the beta did not allow this), along with many other Windows components, but this apparently was not enough for the EU.

37 Reader Comments

Requiring 3rd party browsers is a pretty sticky mess to get into. How do you determine which browsers get in? Are you going to allow anyone who write browser software to be part of this list? Are browser mods like Flock going to be included? "Unbiased choice" is idiotic, what if I write 8 or 9 thousand browsers with names like "Naked donkey browser" and "Don't use this browser" (those are the SFW names)? Will those get included? no? That's biased!

It'd be a far better law to not allow OEMs to bundle the OS (not a good one, just better than this idiotic one).

Did they find that MS engaged in anticompetitive behavior? Fine them. That's not enough? Don't allow them to do business anymore (IE8 not allowed anymore ever). Can't handle that? Then you have a problem that has little to do with Microsoft and more to do with your own bad purchasing decisions (MS is not the only game in town, you do have the option to shop elsewhere).

I hate laws or regulations that protect the consumer from themselves. Consumers are idiots and should suffer for it. If you buy shit, expect companies to make it. If you put all your eggs in one basket then when your basket goes away you get no eggs.

If the EU did want to do this, I think they should figure out how to produce their own variant of an open source browser that is designed for users with little to no understanding of browsers and the internet. That browser would be released as open source and it would have the goal of 1) Functioning as a browser that even a brand new computer user can understand and 2) Be the portal through which someone with a bit of knowledge could easily pick another browser.

Because if they simply say that more browsers have to be included in Windows, I think the net result will be detrimental to the average user.

Asinine. If pissing off the EU wasn't such a bad idea I would hope that Microsoft would say fine, and include Lynx as its "alternative" browser. Also, as far as I know Lynx is about as secure a browser as you can get.

Microsoft could probably solve all this by doing the same thing they do with Search in their own browser, set a default, ask the user if they want to keep it, provide links to download a replacement.

Infinite choice is not necessary, and it isn't all or nothing, or "all or IE8" either, it is reasonable to expect 5-6 of the next major browsers to be on a hypothetical list or even included with the OS if they go that route (which is again, unnecessary).

quote:

Originally posted by strommsarnac:What's next. Force PC OEM's to include Linux and Mac OSX as operating system options at first bootup?

That would be ridiculous too, however they can rightly force Microsoft to stop demanding exclusivity from their hardware partners, and i believe that has been enforced on them in the past.

This is such bullshit. If they force Microsoft to include other browser options they need to do the same thing Apple and all linux distros as well. Because OSX comes bundled with Safari and linux has firefox as pretty much the defacto standard. And just so every one knows, I'm not a fanboy.IE8 was removed from my Win 7 rc 30 seconds after it was installed, Firefox is the best.

But of course it would never be the case that Microsoft would just use Windows Explorer, and 450 garbage alternatives to populate the selection of web browsers. Perhaps its finally the time someone invented a browser that generated all output exclusively in binary. Could be a real money maker for the average joe-the-plumber-turned-programmer.

It would be even more fair to everyone if they demanded monthly reinstalls of all operating systems of all computers, and you can never use the same one twice. Of course, Microsoft would still do well with its 27,000 SKU variants of Vista.

On top of that, the browser shouldn't have a default but rather be selected by random number generator for each page requested.

And, if you regularly visit a government website it should randomly select addresses from other world governments as well just to ensure that everyone has a political choice as well.

Hell, is it even fair how many searches go to Google? Maybe that can be "balanced" a bit as well.

Originally posted by infernal666:This is such bullshit. If they force Microsoft to include other browser options they need to do the same thing Apple and all linux distros as well. Because OSX comes bundled with Safari and linux has firefox as pretty much the defacto standard. And just so every one knows, I'm not a fanboy.IE8 was removed from my Win 7 rc 30 seconds after it was installed, Firefox is the best.

Apple and Linux distros don't have a monopoly, but I would cede the point that Microsoft is rapidly losing the one they do have so action in this case isn't as important as it would have been 10 years ago.

Telling a company to stop using its products to unfairly promote its other products has at least a semblance of validity. Forcing a company to use its products to promote competitors' products though, is just a tad beyond the "wtf?" line.

Many of you are too young to remember the first browser wars, where:- MS would only sell Windows licenses to companies that agreed not to bundle competing products.- MS vowed to "cut off (Netscape's) oxygen" by making IIS the only server product that MS gave away free and IE their only free desktop application. Netscape needed money from browser and web server sales to pay for development, while MS could dump their applications with money from Windows and Office.- MS forced other software companies to bundle IE with their applications since it was the only legal way to distribute the latest versions of the common controls DLLs (used for unrelated things like file open dialogs).

Originally posted by DaveSimmons:MS was convicted of abusing their monopoly power.

Many of you are too young to remember the first browser wars, where:- MS would only sell Windows licenses to companies that agreed not to bundle competing products.- MS vowed to "cut off (Netscape's) oxygen" by making IIS the only server product that MS gave away free and IE their only free desktop application. Netscape needed money from browser and web server sales to pay for development, while MS could dump their applications with money from Windows and Office.- MS forced other software companies to bundle IE with their applications since it was the only legal way to distribute the latest versions of the common controls DLLs (used for unrelated things like file open dialogs).

This is the EU's idea of a remedy for abusive behavior.

That is true and may have made sense at the time - but that was already scrutinized in the case where MS was forced to split its OS and Office divisions, right?

Anyway, that was 1995. Something like 0,1% of people had heard of the Internet, fewer still knew what a browser was or had surfed the web. IE came in freebie discs on PC magazines. MS made the right move to integrate the browser with the OS - I for one wouldn't touch an OS that didn't have one to start with. It's a *basic* OS functionality nowadays. Don't like it: don't use it. I'm posting this on Chrome, btw.

Originally posted by infernal666:This is such bullshit. If they force Microsoft to include other browser options they need to do the same thing Apple and all linux distros as well. Because OSX comes bundled with Safari and linux has firefox as pretty much the defacto standard. And just so every one knows, I'm not a fanboy.IE8 was removed from my Win 7 rc 30 seconds after it was installed, Firefox is the best.

Apple and Linux distros don't have a monopoly, but I would cede the point that Microsoft is rapidly losing the one they do have so action in this case isn't as important as it would have been 10 years ago.

More the reason to do it now, and force the issue across platforms. After all, some people are dreaming of the only smart phone out there being an iPhone, which is somewhat Opera-less as I recall.

Make it standard for everyone and don't worry who does or doesn't have a monopoly 10 years from now.

Originally posted by DaveSimmons:MS was convicted of abusing their monopoly power.

Many of you are too young to remember the first browser wars, where:- MS would only sell Windows licenses to companies that agreed not to bundle competing products.- MS vowed to "cut off (Netscape's) oxygen" by making IIS the only server product that MS gave away free and IE their only free desktop application. Netscape needed money from browser and web server sales to pay for development, while MS could dump their applications with money from Windows and Office.- MS forced other software companies to bundle IE with their applications since it was the only legal way to distribute the latest versions of the common controls DLLs (used for unrelated things like file open dialogs).

This is the EU's idea of a remedy for abusive behavior.

That is true and may have made sense at the time - but that was already scrutinized in the case where MS was forced to split its OS and Office divisions, right?

Anyway, that was 1995. Something like 0,1% of people had heard of the Internet, fewer still knew what a browser was or had surfed the web. IE came in freebie discs on PC magazines. MS made the right move to integrate the browser with the OS - I for one wouldn't touch an OS that didn't have one to start with. It's a *basic* OS functionality nowadays. Don't like it: don't use it. I'm posting this on Chrome, btw.

In addition to that, many of us who actually used the internet back then (no, AOL's "walled garden" was not the internet) laughed hysterically at the idea of changing to IE up until IE4ish. With IE4/5ish microsoft made a good (for the time) browser, over that time netscape kept getting slower and slower. The straw that broke the camels back for me?... simple, IE4 allowed me to resize a browser window without losing the post I was writing because it reset the textbox; Netscape added a fucking shop button and did fark all of nothing to improve upon it.

Netscape never really came back into being a decent browser. Early versions of firefox were interesting but buggy, eventually firefox improved to the point of usability and I use a mix of firefox/chrome now.

Also anyone who thinks you had to buy a copy of netscape clearly was living in a cave, wasn't born, or wasn't using computers back then. Netscape disks, even when internet explorer was only useful for downloading netscape, were so common & easy to find that only AOL disks were more common. You could find them on the checkout counter of electronics stores, find them in magazines, find them randomly shipped to you, often got them shipped to you when you signed up for a new ISP, etc.

Originally posted by DaveSimmons:MS was convicted of abusing their monopoly power.

Many of you are too young to remember the first browser wars, where:- MS would only sell Windows licenses to companies that agreed not to bundle competing products.- MS vowed to "cut off (Netscape's) oxygen" by making IIS the only server product that MS gave away free and IE their only free desktop application. Netscape needed money from browser and web server sales to pay for development, while MS could dump their applications with money from Windows and Office.- MS forced other software companies to bundle IE with their applications since it was the only legal way to distribute the latest versions of the common controls DLLs (used for unrelated things like file open dialogs).

This is the EU's idea of a remedy for abusive behavior.

Your second point is stupid; since the beginning of the browser wars Windows bundles dozens of applications (and earlier).

I'm firmly in the 'don't protect me from myself' camp. The standard should be 'reasonable access to alternatives' not 'easy access to alternatives.' It's moronic to think a computer should come unbundled with a browser - if you unbunble IE, FF or Opera will simply take its place at the OEM. I agree that MS has behaved anti-competitively in the past; the question is whether they are now. As far as I can see, they have been nothing if not compliant with extremely impolite and unhelpful regulators in the EU (and the US for that matter). Competition is a great thing for the marketplace (else I would not have my browser of choice, IE8) and I want it to be enhanced. In history, no good product/idea/process has ever emerged by fining/regulating/controlling/defeating/punishing/criminilizing a given behaviour. It's emerged by developing a better alternative. CAFE standards are stupid - save the money you are investing in them and invest instead in a better alternative (hydrogen, biofuels (NOT ETHANOL), electric, etc) and sell THAT. Not only do you get your end result; you get it without significant harm to the end user (consumers suffer through higher prices) and you grow the new industry. That's actually making change, instead of just putting your regulatory d*** in someone's mouth.

I'm flabbergasted by the negative feedback most of you are giving on this. I've had my thoughts on such a measure for a long time: finally the marketplace for browsers is (possibly) becoming fairer.

Imagine that the public road tax would include a tax reduction if you chose to buy a certain manufacturer's automobiles, thus giving unfair advantage to a certain brand. This is the kind of situation we are in today. Suppose the government would include a sales brochure for a certain brand of automobile with every driver's license, with a special offer paid for by government?. Would that not be unfair competition?

Some of you are spouting "this is a free market" nonsense - arguments which are invalidated because of the fact that Microsft Windows is the defacto public road. Microsoft has a near-monopoly, which means that free market arguments are void. Free market economics depend on fair competition which is absent in the current day browser market.

Crying "free market" is like crying "free democracy" in present day China, when there is none.

I think this move by the EU is a *very* good idea. Include a setup screen at the end of OS installation which allows you to install IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera, and set a system wide default. Include a configuration screen with every new account creation, that allows you to choose from among the installed browsers, which to set as default.

You may venture that Microsoft has the "right" to do as they please with their product, but they lost that right when they reached monopoly position. They are the public highway. They are partly in public domain.

Originally posted by DaveSimmons:MS was convicted of abusing their monopoly power.

Not in the EU they weren't.

Personally I don't think the EU should even be investigating this. IE's marketshare is shrinking all the time, especially in Europe so why bother wasting time and money on it. Also, look at the waste of time that the EU's last investigation into WMP turned out to be. I can honestly say that I've never even had the opportunity to purchase or buy a computer bundled with Windows N editions and wouldn't buy one if I could.

Microsoft have every right to do what they want with their own software. The EU shouldn't be trying to make up for the fact that Opera is unable to compete with their crappy browser.

We've moved beyond Microsoft's early 90's antitrust stance and are now just perpetuating the atrocious trend of government trying to run private industry. There is no need to mandate such a regulation in todays world, where most everyone knows of at least 3 other browsers. If you don't like IE, then take 5 minutes and load it yourself. It's because of all the crap that comes bundled on a new machine that makes it all but necessary to format and rebuild before the installation is worth using.

Regulate the companies actions, not their product build.

Makes you wonder how much money the EU receives from these companies to "assist" them in doing what they seem unable to do by the merits of their product alone.

This is pointless. Anyone who does not know how to use a search engine and download the browser of their choice will not know the differences between the web browsers offered on the ballot in the first place.

Also, dryden, your car/road analogy is flawed. In your analogy, cars from all makers would be free and you could switch cars by calling the car company and requesting one, and it would be delivered to you in minutes, free of charge.

Originally posted by jestrzcap:It'd be a far better law to not allow OEMs to bundle the OS (not a good one, just better than this idiotic one).

I like that one, Making people install their own OS might help them get more of a clue about their computers.

How about this as an alternative..

As soon as Windows 7 is released, MS stops selling vista and xp in the EU. PC's with windows 7 sold in the EU come with NO BROWSER installed. At that point, you will not be able to get a Microsoft desktop OS with an integrated browser, so problem solved. If a manufacturer wants to include a browser, they can include a CD and let users make their own choice.

People make all kinds of noise about MS bundling the browser in windows, but also fail to remember that they also added TCP/IP to windows when there were a lot of companies charging customers for it.

This is very much like punishing a guy for his ancestor's crimes. Microsoft now isn't Microsoft of 1998.

One wonders how the EU plans for Microsoft to implement this. A dialog box at setup or first boot seems the easiest option, but how are the users supposed to differentiate between them? (Maybe a link to Wikipedia?) In any case, they'll probably just go for the blue e, or else close it because they think it's just another popup.

As an aside, a lot of my friends, I've seen, do this with IE8's initial config/IE7's Phishing Filter screen. Every. Single. Time. They just want it to work, so obviously putting up another dialog isn't going to cut the mustard.

I've been thinking about this - and I think the simple solution is that any browser should be included with Windows. So long as the developer is willing to pay for it. Microsoft should assess the cost of providing IE, and the marketing value of adding a piece of software to its factory install (so that every user in a market gets it) - and bill Mozz, Apple, Opera - whoever wants in. After all, Microsoft incurs this cost when the add IE to Windows (even if it is just moving money within the company).

Some will say the barrier to market entry will be high - Firefox, an open source product that was given away free, was able to crack 30-50% in some national markets.

Anyone who can pay the $100Mil per market is welcome to piggyback on MS's products.

How about installing a Browser Choice link on the new computer's desktop. When viewed it sets out all the viable browser options for the computer along with arguments for the efficacy and implications of each browser?

.where is the problem?.add Opera or Firefox to Windows 7 did NOT change anything for Microsoft!.this idea should be the Bill and Melissa Gates Foundation, since, add Opera and Firefox to Windows, may help them to survive a few months until Googzilla will et up both browsers with its Chrometooths... .also, in 2010, MS cold give them some ad spaces on the "BingHOO!" search engine home page....http://newgoos.blogspot.com/20...d-for-1-in-2012.html.

Originally posted by jestrzcap:It'd be a far better law to not allow OEMs to bundle the OS (not a good one, just better than this idiotic one).

I like that one, Making people install their own OS might help them get more of a clue about their computers.

How about this as an alternative..

As soon as Windows 7 is released, MS stops selling vista and xp in the EU. PC's with windows 7 sold in the EU come with NO BROWSER installed. At that point, you will not be able to get a Microsoft desktop OS with an integrated browser, so problem solved. If a manufacturer wants to include a browser, they can include a CD and let users make their own choice.

People make all kinds of noise about MS bundling the browser in windows, but also fail to remember that they also added TCP/IP to windows when there were a lot of companies charging customers for it.

So long as OEMs are allowed to choose the browser bundled with their machines, your idea seems fine. It allows MS to stab themselves in the foot to spite the EU, and users get choice in browsers (presumably different OEMs could bundle different browsers or different combinations of browsers). Everyone wins.

Originally posted by MarkKB:This is very much like punishing a guy for his ancestor's crimes. Microsoft now isn't Microsoft of 1998.

If corporations get the legal benefits of being a single individual, continuous through time, then they get to deal with the legal repercussions of that status, too. If they don't want to be liable for actions of an 'ancestor' MS, they can disband the company and form a new one. That's going to be stunningly expensive and time-consuming, however.

So I wonder if MS was to start porting IE code again, and made IE for OSX, IE for iPhone, would EU force Apple to bundle IE with their OS?

This is beyond stupid. Microsoft could go away completely, and there will still be someone with dominant market share in the OS/Browser/insert IE technology here that someone under them will bitch about unfair competition...

Apple makes their own hardware, OS, and bundles all the common broswer, mail, chat, etc.. apps written by Apple with their stuff.

Microsoft has a more open system of allowing 3rd parties to develop all kinds of software (which leads to software that competes with its own offerings), and they get all the shit for it...

My analogy wasn't as flawed as you would think. What is "purchase cost" to an automobile, equals to "selection and familiarisation effort" to a different browser. In both cases the user has to incur a 'cost' in order to use the alternative product. That's the analogy.

quote:

Microsoft should NEVER have to include alternative choices pre-installed in their product.

One security hole in one of these browsers and guess who will get blamed for the security breech.

If that is the "why" to your statement, then you are clueless. I don't think MS would have to be legally reponsible for breaches in third party products. All software includes a limited liablity clause, such as not being liable for consequential damages. It is senseless to blame Microsoft for leaks in a supplied Firefox. No one is going to do this.

It is easy to drop the "should" bomb, but I have not heard a single good argument AGAINST bundling alternative browsers. All arguments fall in the "MS should be free to behave as they wish" which is not an argument, it's a statement.

Exactly what "bad" thing would happen if MS were to be forced to bundle alternative software in their product? I don't see it, and none of you have mentioned it.

quote:

A more realistic solution would be for the EU to ask OEMs to pre-install alternative browsers NOT Microsoft.

That would be a good idea as well, but it doesn't make a real difference. Where is the difference? Why is Microsoft's freedom of choice so terribly holy here that it supersedes the effective freedom of choice of consumers?

And don't give me that "users are free, they are just stupid and it's their own fault" bullshit. Defaults matter. Defaults matter hugely, and determine large outcomes in the software marketplace. Microsoft is able and willing to use its dominance to foster dominance for its other products. Thank God there is Google - even though it's another near monopoly in the online advertising and search arena. Monopolies are never good for the world. In the end they are wildly dangerous. Corporations don't have the interests of their end users in mind (aka global society), only their own.

This move by the EU is just a way to promote the interests of global society over that of a single corporation. I see no harm there.

Originally posted by mrsteveman1:That would be ridiculous too, however they can rightly force Microsoft to stop demanding exclusivity from their hardware partners

MS does not demand exclusivity from their hardware partners. The OEM is free to install something like FireFox *if they chose to*. Many do. One of the last computers i got came with FireFox.

But the important thing here is that the choice is left to the OEM as to what they want to install and support. How will that work with this new system? Will MS be forced to support these browsers? What if one has a security vulnerability? Will MS be forced to patch it themselves? What about the OEM? Are the responsible for supporting all these different configs?